Special Collections Department

PICTURING DELAWARE

The
Changing Look of Delaware

Carol E. Hoffecker
Richards Professor of History
University of Delaware

There is a fascination at seeing images of familiar places as they appeared
long ago, before the continuing march of technological modernization changed
them almost beyond recognition. The Library of the University of Delaware
has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of historic
images of Delaware. From this rich resource the Library has assembled
a sampling of scenes from Delaware's past. This exhibit provides a glimpse
into a world that, in spite of its geographical proximity to us, was very
different from the one that we inhabit today. This exhibit will mean different
things to viewers depending on their age. For older Delawareans who may
recall some of what they see, it will be like greeting old friends whom
they have not seen in a long time. To younger people, however, the images
will introduce an unfamiliar world: a world where teams of mules pulled
plows, where today's popular beach resorts were in their infancy, and
where "down town" was the center of community life and commerce
in towns and cities throughout the state.

The elements that make up the exhibit were produced in different times
and in different media to fulfill a variety of purposes. Some aimed
at accuracy, others at artistry. The early maps are of particular interest
because the cartographers who drew them often achieved the latter while
aiming for the former. The maps illustrate the importance of the Delaware
Bay and River to the early European settlers. Water was indispensable.
Navigable waterways dictated where settlements could be established
and where commerce could flourish. Rapidly flowing streams provided
the best source of power to turn logs into boards and grain into flour.
The maps also illustrate the struggle for the land that absorbed America's
two greatest proprietary families, the Penns and the Calverts, through
most of the colonial period. The outcome paved the way for Delaware
to become its own state, independent of either of its larger neighbors,
Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The Delaware that the first European settlers first saw was heavily
forested. Pines mixed with oak, bald cypress, cedar and holly filled
much of the southern part of the state, while hardwoods predominated
in the north. Marshlands covered the land close to the bay providing
fodder for migratory birds. Beaver dams created ponds along the meandering
streams that ran from the spine of the state to the Delaware Bay and
River. There were also meadows and farm clearings that the Native Americans
made close to their villages..

It did not take long for the newcomers to alter the landscape. The
Dutch and Swedes paid the Native Americans to supply beaver skins, and
within two decades the beaver virtually vanished from Delaware. The
settlers drained marshes to create meadows for their farm animals and
to provide dry land for building houses and barns. Land was cleared
for farming; roadways were laid out; and bridges were built across small
rivers. By the time of the American Revolution there were numerous villages
in Delaware and several towns: New Castle, Dover, and Lewes were county
seats, and Wilmington was a port and center for flour milling. The Swedes
and Finns had introduced the log cabin to America in Delaware and these
simple dwellings, together with structures of sawed wood, were commonplace
among the early settlements. By the 1700s, however, brick had become
the preferred building material and nearly all of the state's most treasured
historic churches, houses, and public buildings were constructed of
that material. These simple, yet elegant buildings have in more recent
times attracted artists, architects, and photographers some of whose
work is on display in this exhibition.

The American Revolution coincided with another great revolution, not
in political philosophy, but in the methods of production that we call
the Industrial Revolution. Freed of colonial restraints Americans seized
upon opportunities to build the new nation's economy. The streams and
rivers of northern New Castle County-- Brandywine, Red Clay, and White
Clay-- powered mills that manufactured textiles, paper, and black powder.
Production in the new water- powered factories and the expansion of
commercial agriculture depended on improved transportation. The Delaware
of 1840 had changed quite dramatically in just fifty years. Steamboats
challenged sail on the Delaware River. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal
bisected the state shortening the trip from Baltimore to Philadelphia.
Turnpikes radiated out from Wilmington, now the state's largest city
and center of manufacturing, and most novel of all, a railroad called
the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore linked Delaware to the emerging
land-based American transportation network. In 1856 the railroad was
extended to southern Delaware, thus opening new lands in the western
parts of Kent and Sussex Counties to agricultural markets.

Late-nineteenth-century Wilmington was an industrial city. Its steam-powered
factories, located near to the Christina River and the railroad, produced
leather goods, riverboats, railroad cars, and the iron wheels on which
America's transportation ran. The city attracted newcomers from many
places: farm workers, both black and white, from the Delmarva region,
and European immigrants, especially Irish, English, and Germans from
the 1840s through the 1880s, then Polish, Russian Jews, and Italians.
Each new group created its own institutions, especially churches and
synagogues, that stood at the center of that group's neighborhood of
brick row houses. The factory owners who constituted the city's wealthiest
citizens built larger, more stylish homes on the high ground of the
western part of the city on or near Delaware Avenue. A horse-car line,
then later, trolley cars sped transportation within the city and made
it possible to extend home building ever farther from the urban center
on Market Street.

What steam power and railroads were to change in the nineteenth century,
the internal combustion engine and highways were to the twentieth. The
catalyst for this far-reaching development in Delaware was T. Coleman
du Pont, the president of the Dupont Company and an enthusiastic visionary
for motorized transportation. In 1902 T. Coleman was one of three du
Pont cousins who reshaped their family's century-old black powder and
explosives firm into a modern corporation. Seeing the backwardness of
Delaware's agriculture, T. Coleman proposed to build a concrete divided
highway the length of the state at his own expense. The farmers were
suspicious, but T. Coleman was as good as his word. Not only was the
highway a free gift, it brought on a revolution in agricultural production
in southern Delaware.

Until the 1920s raising chickens had been only a minor aspect of farming,
the farm wife's source of "egg money." Then Cecile Steele
of Ocean View discovered the profit to be made in trucking young chickens
to urban markets on the new highway. Within a few years Sussex County
became the largest poultry-producing county in the United States, a
position it still holds. Long, wooden chicken houses dotted the county's
agricultural landscape and farmers turned their arable land toward the
production of corn and soybeans to feed the growing flocks of birds.
Prosperity led to the clearing of many more acres of timberland until
the formerly heavily forested Sussex became predominantly agricultural.
Town life quickened, and farmers, who for the first time in their lives
were earning significant cash, bought tractors and trucks to replace
their mules and wagons.

The highway also speeded the development of seashore resorts along
Sussex's ocean and bay fronts. The ocean-side resorts of Rehoboth Beach
and Bethany Beach began as Methodist camp meetings. Rehoboth was made
accessible by the extension of a rail line in the late nineteenth century.
The depot was on Rehoboth's broad main boulevard, Rehoboth Avenue. In
imitation of Atlantic City, Rehoboth added a modest boardwalk. By the
early twentieth century the resort's clapboard houses usually built
with porches on two sides had the look of a typical southern Delaware
town, except that the town was built on the sand only one dune away
from the ocean beach. There were also a few small hotels, mostly designed
as larger versions of the houses. The automobile changed everything.
New, larger hotels were built, more houses filled in the streets, and
the dunes disappeared under the concession buildings constructed along
an enlarged boardwalk.

The transformative power of the du Pont Highway had an equally dramatic
influence in the northern part of the state. The highway was the center
of a network of roadways that encouraged the development of suburban
housing extending beyond Wilmington's older trolley suburbs. An explosion
of building followed World War II. Suburban developments were located
close to the newly constructed Kirkwood Highway that connected Wilmington
to Newark and the enlarged Concord Pike, which had originated as a turnpike
in the early nineteenth century. In Kent County the construction of
a major east coast US Air Force base and establishment of new industries
re-made Dover, and the du Pont Highway bypass of the state capital became
a jumble of fast food restaurants and strip malls similar to the pattern
in northern Delaware.

Despite warnings about overbuilding, the pressure for highway expansion
and other forms of construction continued to accelerate during the latter
years of the twentieth century. I-95 and the Delaware Memorial Bridges
carry thousands of east coast travelers through Delaware every day.
Many don't know they have been in Delaware until they stop to pay a
toll. With E-Z pass they may never know. Large regional malls with their
gigantic parking lots have long since removed retail shopping from Delaware's
main streets. Many town centers struggle to find a new identity. Former
farming communities such as the area around Middletown and the western
side of Indian River Bay near Millsboro have seen a rapid shift from
agriculture to residential construction.

In the midst of these seemingly relentless changes it is salutary to
look back at the world we have left behind. A slower world, a less crowded
world, and one in which people lived closer to nature, but with fewer
possessions. We cannot go back, but in reflecting on the world we have
left behind we can gain a sense of where we have been, and by connecting
with our past, search for ways to sustain our ties to the land that
is Delaware.